"They don't understand how much I give and how it effects me. And now they want more."

Toward the end of "Control," Ian Curtis, the late singer and lyricist for the awesome post-punk band Joy Division, echoes the lament of nearly every artist who learns what a persistent bitch success can be. Music history is plagued with the names of those who couldn't hack fame, their early deaths the results of numbing taken too far or something less hesitant, like a noose or a shotgun. But their legacies always endure, and no filmmaker could resist a tale full of youth, beauty, art, conflict, triumph, tragedy, sex, drugs, and...oh, you know.

Director Anton Corbijn - most are familiar with both his iconic photography and inspired music videos (i.e., Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box") - finally makes his feature-film debut with "Control," which chronicles the short existence of Curtis, who hung himself at 23 years old, just as Joy Division was preparing to storm the United States. With its working-class backdrop, a young marriage, and the drug-taking pretty much limited to prescribed epilepsy medication, "Control" doesn't make for the most sordid rock-n-roll fable, but Corbijn finds enough (just barely) in Curtis' life to fuel this homage, and every dull stretch of moping is offset by breathtaking musical performances by the quartet of men channeling Joy Division.

Unspooling in velvety, high-contrast black and white, "Control" opens in mid-‘70s Manchester, as Curtis (lush and lanky Sam Riley, in a star-making performance) spends his time writing, pretending he's Bowie, and coveting his best friend's girlfriend (the chameleonic Samantha Morton). They will settle into domesticity at 18, and he will find an outlet for his prose after he and his mates get blindsided by that now-celebrated 1976 Sex Pistols show that also supposedly led to the formation of The Smiths, Buzzcocks, and The Fall. The fledgling Joy Division captures the attention of Mancunian impresario Tony Wilson (Michael Winterbottom's great "24 Hour Party People" also details that lightning-in-a-bottle Manchester scene) and Curtis catches the eye of a leggy Belgian named Annick, with whom he begins an affair. Add an epilepsy diagnosis to professional stress and marital strife, and it isn't long before Curtis begins to shatter.

It's kind of a cliché at this point, isn't it? Nearly every movie about a suicidal artist follows this trajectory, and as rock stories go, Curtis' life really wasn't all that interesting. And though the performances are uniformly spot-on - Toby Kebbell stands out as the group's fast-talking manager - the screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh doesn't (and can't, probably) shed much light on what may have gone into the creation of Curtis' elegantly pessimistic lyrics or the creative process by which he and his band became far more than the sum of their parts.

But Corbijn knows he has an ace up his sleeve, and that's the brilliant sounds of Joy Division, which he uses most effectively (it's obvious, sure, but try not to well up when "Love Will Tear Us Apart" kicks in). Corbijn also hit the jackpot with the four actors (Riley abandons himself in Curtis on stage) who were able to fashion themselves into a somewhat extraordinary Joy Division cover band and simply let the music do the talking.

More Jean-Pierre Melville? It's like Christmas every day around here! The latest from the nonetheless dead French legend, most recently on Top 10 lists last year thanks to the re-release of 1969's French Resistance thriller "Army of Shadows," is 1962's "Le Doulos," which takes its title from the slang used for a police informant. It stars a young and juicy Jean-Paul Belmondo (from Godard's seminal "Breathless") as Silien, a man of dubious morals with associates on both sides of the law, and the twisty plot turns on the typical Melville themes of heists, double-crosses, eyelinered babes with boudoir hair, and honor among thieves.

"Le Doulos" is not Melville's best (maybe the 1967 Alain Delon flick "Le Samouraï"?), but it's still pretty damn good, the showpiece being a nearly 10-minute interrogation scene shot in one unbroken take. Shocking in this day and age, however, is the casually nasty misogyny, with one unfortunate dame getting the merde slapped out of her before being hogtied and doused in booze (not to mention murdered). And we don't know why she's incurred such vitriol, because Melville parcels out relevant facts so slowly. And at the center there's the insanely charismatic Belmondo, his sadistic, pouty smirk topped with melancholy eyes that have seen too much...but, as with most Melville anti-heroes, likely won't see too much more.